The "ARM" in ARMv8 refers to the dominant chip technology used in smartphones and tablets worldwide. Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia, MediaTek, and others all license technology from ARM. That's how Android can run on a variety of smartphones with a variety of ARM chips.

The 'v8" part refers to ARM's 64-bit chip architecture. Current ARM chips from all of the above chip suppliers are 32-bit.

Apple is ahead of the pack. "To achieve this feat, Apple must have designed its own custom CPU," Gwenapp said, referring to the 64-bitness in the CPU or central processing unit. ARM's own 64-bit designs are not scheduled for commercial production until 2014 -- and that's probably later in 2014, not early in the year.

The short answer is a future iPad -- or whatever future newfangled iOS device Apple dreams up -- can address more memory. Let's just say more than the 4GB limitation in many cases for 32-bit processors.

The longer answer is that 64-bit allows data-intensive applications to handle large chunks of data more efficiently than 32-bit. Right now, ARM is aiming 64-bit chips at servers, not smartphones. Why? Because servers can benefit immediately in a big way -- for the reasons stated above.

In fact, the only other ARMv8 chip that has even reached the sample production stage is AppliedMicro's X-Gene, a server processor expected to reach production late this year, according to Gwennap.

So, Apple will have to convince its own developers that it makes sense to develop 64-bit apps for consumers, like the Epic Games Infinity Blade 3 demoed at the Apple iPhone event on Tuesday.

Apple's Phil Schiller, speaking at the event, said Apple's iOS 7 has been "completely re-engineered for 64-bit...64-bit kernels, libraries, and drivers. And the apps that come with your iPhone 5S, they've been re-engineered to 64 bit as well."

"This will be an easy transition for developers, we've updated our tools...to support 64-bit," he added.